THE IMAM AL-MĀTURĪDĪ SCHOOL OF TAWḤĪD: ḤIKMAT AND AMĀNAT OF BOSNIA

Ph.D. Mustafa Cerić, 

Grand Mufti of Bosnia (1993-2012) 

President of the Bord of Trustees of the Center of Wasatiyyah 

Bosnia-Herzegovina,

روى مسلم في صحيحه (2839)، عَنْ أَبِي هُرَيْرَةَ، قَالَ: قَالَ رَسُولُ اللهِ صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ: “سَيْحَانُ وَجَيْحَانُ، وَالْفُرَاتُ وَالنِّيلُ: كُلٌّ مِنْ أَنْهَارِ الْجَنَّةِ“

Muslim narrates in his “Ṣaḥīḥ” (2839) from Abu Hurayrah that the Messenger of Allah said: -

The rivers Amu Darya, Oxus, Euphrates and Nile are rivers of paradise.

Water is the source of life. Indeed, everything came from water. Almighty God said: - From water We have made everything living! [Wa jaʿalnā min al-māʼi kulla shayʼin ḥayyan([1])]; and the Prophet Muhammad, a.s., said: - Everything was created from water! [Kullu shayʼin khuliqa min māʼin([2]]. Hence, water is proof that there is thirst, and thirst is proof that there is water to quench the thirst of the living body. Water in the form of rain falls from the sky to the ground. The earth absorbs water and returns it to the surface as water sources from which rivers are made, from which seas and oceans are formed. Water is the earth’s blood, and rivers are the earth’s vascular system. The seas and oceans are the earth’s lungs. 

However, thirst is not just physical. Thirst is also spiritual. Moreover, the thirst of the soul can be more intense than the thirst of the body. This is well known by a Sufi whose soul is thirsty, al-ʿaṭšān, for Truth (al-ḥaqīqah), just as the body is thirsty for water; this is known to a Sufi whose heart is thirsty for the love of the Beloved (al-maḥbūb), just as a man in the desert is thirsty for a drop of rain. Thus, Truth is proof that there is a thirst of soul, and the thirst of soul is proof that there is the Truth (al-ḥaqīqah), which quenches the thirst of  soul. Al-ḥaqīqah descends from heaven in the form of God’s word to man’s heart. The heart of man receives the word of God and transforms it into his good deeds from which human culture and civilization arise, from which human success on earth entails and salvation in heaven remains. Al-ḥaqīqah is the core of the spirit in the soul of man, and the word of God is the path (al-ṭarīqah) to the well of al-ḥaqīqah, where the soul quenches its thirst. This well of al-ḥaqīqah is called al-sharīʿah, a word that is not mentioned in the Qur’an in this shape, but in the shape of shirʿatan([3]), which means: “A spring from which to drink water without a bucket with a rope” (mawrid al-māʼi alladhī yustasqā minhu bilā rišāin([4]).

Just as the water spring of Zamzam boiled from the earth in the Mecca desert from which Hajar quenched the physical thirst of her son Ismail, so the spiritual spring al-sharīʿah boiled from the lawḥ-i maḥfūz in the heaven and descended its clearest jet to the Mecca desert from which the last Allah’s Messenger Muhammad, peace be upon him, quenched his and the spiritual thirst of mankind. Both springs, Zamzam for bodily and al-sharīʿah for spiritual thirst, boiled in the Mecca desert to distinguish it from all other springs on earth, as well as not to mix it with springs, which pollute man. Zamzam is an inexhaustible spring of water, which springs from the depths of the earth, which is inaccessible to neither the human eye nor the human hand, and is therefore pure and blessed; the al-sharīʿah is an eternally inexhaustible spiritual source, which springs from the lawḥ-i maḥfūz, the “Eternally Preserved Record of God’s words,” where everything is written from beginning to end, a source that can neither be obscured nor dried up and is therefore a salvation for the human soul whether or not man is aware of it or not aware of it.

If anything is to be crystal clear to everyone about Islamic culture and civilization in a geographical and historical sense, it should be clear that Islam was best domesticated where there were water springs like Zamzam, where gardens like in Paradise were flourishing, where beneath the gardens were flowing rivers… It was not only the Bedouin nostalgia for water and the green oasis in the desert, but it was also the need for body hygiene through which spiritual purity is attained that attracted Muslim attention. Ablution, abdest, washing the hands and other parts of the body, is an introduction to prayer, namaz, i.e. the Miʿrāj, spiritual ascension and purification of the believers. Carried by the idea that water is the source of life, as well as that places where rivers flow like Mesopotamia, which literally means “land between two rivers”, a source for spiritual culture and world civilization like Babylon, the second Abbasid caliph Abū Jaʿfar Al-Manṣūr (714 - 775) had erected in 762 the city of Baghdad (“God’s gift”) “between two rivers,” Mesopotamia, and thus marked the focal point of Islamic spiritual and intellectual culture and Islamic world civilization.

During the time of the fifth Abbasid caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd, Baghdad was given the name Madīnat al-Salām (“City of Peace”), where it experienced its greatest glory, mentioned in the story of the Thousand and One Nights, when Baghdad was one of the richest and largest cities in the world. Even Amr ibn al-ʿĀṣ (573-664) could not resist the magical Nile of Egypt, where he conquered Egypt on his own between 639-642 during the time of the second righteous caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭtāb (586-644) and thus confirming the accuracy of the ḥadīth that next to the Euphrates the Nile is a river of paradise. But the ḥadīth narration of the four rivers of paradise on earth for which the Muslim soul longed for physical and spiritual thirst was not fully told until Qutayba ibn Muslim (669 - 715/6) did cross the two rivers of Amu Dari and Oxus, i.e., until he reached the Transoxiana, (Mā warāʼ al-nahr), i.e., the area that is “behind the river.” This effort of Qutayba ibn Muslim’s crossing into the area of “behind the river” towards the middle and the Far East, had lasted between 710 and 712, from the conquest of Bukhara to its final conquest of Samarkand (“Stone City”), a city that, like Baghdad, became the center of Islamic spiritual and intellectual culture as well as Islamic world civilization even further and further east to India and China. 

Like Baghdad between two rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, where Babylonian culture had been developed, and like Cairo on the Nile, where ancient Egyptian civilization had been sprang, Samarkand was/is  also one of the oldest inhabited cities in Central Asia, where ancient cultures had been replacing each other, namely  Persian and Greece, until Islamic culture and civilization took root, which, despite all the challenges, could not be eradicated even by the violent Mongol Genghis Khan (1162 -1227), who in 1220 destroyed Samarkand, as it was later in 1258 his grandson Hülegü Khan (1217 - 1265) who devastated Baghdad. But a strong thirst for clean water from the Euphrates, Nile and Oxus could not drive the Muslims away from Baghdad, Cairo and Samarkand. Despite all the temptations from the British colonization of Cairo through the Soviet ungodly de-Islamization of Samarkand to the recent American invasion of Baghdad, these three cities, which stretch along the banks of the four rivers of Paradise (Euphrates, Nile, Amu Darya and Oxus) have remained  beacons of the original Islamic-Sunni thoughts and practices thanks to great Muslim minds such as Imam Abū al-Ḥasan Ismāʿīl al-Ashʿarī (874–936) in Baghdad, Imam Abū Ja’far al-Ṭaḥāwi (843-933) in Cairo and Imam Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdi (853– 944) in Samarkand.

As can be seen these three founders of theological-Sunni thought in Islam lived in the same age but operated in different geographical contexts which had an impact on their spiritual condition and intellectual orientation. In Baghdad, the capital of the caliph’s political power, which was slowly disappearing in favor of the increasingly powerful peripheries of the Islamic empire, al-Ashʿarī had first to save his personal spiritual and moral integrity from controversial theological Muʿtazilī ideas, and then to liberate the entire Islamic thought from a theological anthropomorphism of literalists, who had gone too far in their defense against Muʿtazilī ultra-rationalism. At the heart of Baghdad’s condensed competition of theological and philosophical ideas, it cannot be said that al-Ashʿarī was a winner during his lifetime. However, al-Ashʿarī certainly laid the foundations on which the great Imam al-Ghazālī (d.1111) had built a solid edifice of the Sunni-theological school, which is still valid today. That is why al-Ashʿarian theological Sunnism is vague and unconvincing without Imam al-Ghazālī, who through his fiqh (legal), kalām (theological), falsafah (philosophical) and taṣawwuf (mystical) thought definitely has set the postulates of the Islamic-Sunnite doctrine which has become generally recognized. 

Al-Ṭaḥāwī in Cairo did not have al-Ashʿarian temptations. Thus, he was able peacefully to write a short collection ([5]) of Islamic doctrines (ʿaqā’id) in a simple and memorable way. Many commentaries have been written on this summary of Islamic doctrines by al-Ṭaḥāwi, of which the commentary (al-ʿaqīdah al-ṭaḥāwiyya) by Ibn Abī al-ʻIzza (1331 - 1390) is the most famous ([6]).

Our Imam Abū Manṣūra al-Māturīdī did not live in the center of the caliph’s political power in Baghdad, nor in the center of controversial debates on the relationship between muʿtazilism and anti-muʿtazilsm, but the echo of events in Baghdad had sounded in the far east of the Islamic empire of Samarkand. In almost ten decades of his life in Samarkand, Imam al-Māturīdī remembered twelve Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad from al-Mutawakkil (847-861) to al-Muttaqī (940-944). But he was fortunate to live in the time of the peripheral dynasty of the Islamic empire of the Samanids ([7]), who ruled Khurasan and Transoxiana (819-1005) and who had great respect for learned people, among whom Imam al-Māturīdī enjoyed a special place. However, it was not only Samanid’s inclination toward the ʿulamāʼ that determined the direction of Imam al-Māturīdī’s theological thought, but probably much more, the geographical context of Samarkand, Bukhara and the entire Transoxiana region had been the factor which shaped his legal (fiqh) and theological (kalām) thought.

The geographical position of Samarkand was such that for a certain period it was one of the largest cities in Central Asia. Samarkand was right on the “Silk Road” between China and the Mediterranean, where world traders met, where cultures mingled, where ideas and experiences were exchanged, especially about medicine. We cannot but mention here one of the greatest medical minds Abū ʿAli al-Ḥusain ibn Sīna (980 –1037) from Bukhara, author of the “Code of Medicine” (“Al-Qānūn fī’l-ṭibb”) or (“Canon medicinae” )! May it be recalled here that it was he, Ibn Sīna, who invented the method of isolation from infectious diseases for forty days, which he called Al-Arbeʿīniyyah, (الأربعينية), [forty]. The knowledge of this was transferred to Venice and translated as “quarantena”, which in Italian means “forty.” Hence the word “quarantine” came from Ibn Sīna in the tenth to eleventh centuries in Bukhara who knew how to deal with today’s virus called Corona. 

In addition to the need to debate with the Muʿtazilian rival Abū al-Qāsim al-Kaʿbī([8]) of Balkh (d. 931), whom the Muʿtazilites respectfully proclaimed as the “Imam of human race” (“imām ahl al-ʼarḍ”), Imam al-Māturīdī did not engage too much within the Muslim controversial theological debate, but directed his rational argumentation toward theological and philosophical challenges outside the Islamic circle, particularly toward polytheism, agnosticism, dualism, and pantheism. The basis for his arguments in theology in such an environment, where each has its own religious and cultural tradition to which it refers, Imam al-Māturīdī invoked common sense, as a safe measure in thought and behavior, but also, he invoked the divine message, conveyed by the infallible messengers of God, as the basis for understanding the meaning of God, man and the world. Therefore, at the beginning of his magnum opus Kitāb al-tawḥīd (“The Book of Monotheism”), Imam al-Māturīdī sets the principle of common sense as the basic criterion for truth in faith, because faith is not valid if it cannot be explained and proved by reason regardless to the number of followers of a particular religion. Here is what Imam al-Māturīdī said:

We meet people of different manifestations in the faith, but they all agree on one thing, and that is that the manifestation of one is true, and that the manifestation of the other is a lie. Also, people agree that everyone has their ancestor, whom they unconditionally follow, so it is not disputed that people have opposing statements on the same issue, although the only proof of this is the number of followers. But the proof of the truth of the manifestation, which ends with one (and that is the messenger of God) is reason and apodictic proof, which satisfies the object’s minds to admit that he has touched the truth. For he who has rational support in faith, i.e., a support which can be proved by reason, is right. Therefore, it is the obligation of all to know the truth, which he follows in faith with true evidence and correct testimony even if I was alone, because his evidence forces common sense to obey him in spite of their abundance. That is what I said, so let it be known that in faith it is not appropriate to think differently if it is different against rational evidence after it is proven that rational evidence has prevailed and the ambiguities and doubts of others have been defeated. 

[1] Qur’an, 21:30.

[2] This ḥadīth was narrated by Abu Huraira in response to his question to the Messenger of Allah to explain him the source of everything that exists. So, everything that exists was created from water, was the Prophet›s answer. 

[3] Qur’an, 5:48.

[4] Al-Muʿjam al-wasīṭ, 1/479. 

[5] It is interesting to mention that Catholics also have a collection of doctrines, which they call “catechism,” as a handbook for Catholic religious instruction. Imam al-Ṭaḥāwi can be said to be the original author of a short collection of Sunni-Islamic doctrines (ʿaqā›id), doctrines that are very concise and memorable not only for students but also for anyone who wants to learn the essential principles of the Islamic faith. 

[6] This commentary (al-ʿaqīdah al-ṭaḥāwiyyah) by Ibn Abu-l-ʿIzza was published by El-Kalem Publishing House, Riyaset of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, 2015, translated into Bosnian by Mustafa Prljača under the title: «Religious Teachings of Islam, Commentary on al-Ṭaḥāwī’s Aqīdah». 

[7] The founder of the Samanid dynasty was Sāmān-Khudā, of Persian descent, from Balkh. Having embraced Islam, Caliph al-Ma’mūn took his four sons to serve in Khurasan. As a token of gratitude for their good service Noah was appointed Governor of Samarkand, Ahmed Farghan, Yahya Shash and Ilyas Herat.

[8] See: Racha El Umari, The Thoelogy of Abū al-Qāsim al-Kaʿbī (d.319/931), Brill2016.